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SIR WALTER SCOTT AND THE BORDER MINSTRELSY by Andrew Lang

SIR WALTER SCOTT AND THE BORDER MINSTRELSY by Andrew Lang

Persons not much interested in, or cognisant of, “antiquarian old womanries,” as Sir Walter called them, may ask “what all the pother is about,” in this little tractate. On my side it is “about” the veracity of Sir Walter Scott. He has been suspected of helping to
compose, and of issuing as a genuine antique, a ballad, Auld
Maitland. He also wrote about the ballad, as a thing obtained from
recitation, to two friends and fellow-antiquaries. If to Scott’s
knowledge it was a modern imitation, Sir Walter deliberately lied……

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Theocritus, bion and moschus rendered into english prose with an introductory essay by Andrew lang

Theocritus, bion and moschus rendered into english prose with an introductory essay by Andrew lang

Theocritus, the Chian. But there is another Theocritus, the son of Praxagoras and Philinna (see Epigram XXIII), or as some say of Simichus. (This is plainly derived from the assumed name Simichidas in Idyl VII.) He was a Syracusan, or, as others say, a Coan settled in Syracuse. He wrote the so-called Bucolics in the Dorian dialect. Some attribute to him the following works:- The Proetidae, The Pleasures of Hope (‘Ελπιδες), Hymns, The Heroines, Dirges, Ditties, Elegies, Iambics, Epigrams. But it known that there are three Bucolic poets: this Theocritus, Moschus of Sicily, and Bion of Smyrna, from a village called Phlossa…………

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A short history of scotland by Andrew lang

A short history of scotland by Andrew lang

If we could see in a magic mirror the country now called Scotland as it was when the Romans under Agricola (81 A.D.) crossed the Border, we should recognise little but the familiar hills and mountains. The rivers, in the plains, overflowed their present banks; dense forests of oak and pine, haunted by great red deer, elks, and boars, covered land that has long been arable. There were lakes and lagoons where for centuries there have been fields of corn. On the oldest sites of our towns were groups of huts made of clay and wattle, and dominated, perhaps, by the large stockaded house of the tribal prince. ……

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Shakespeare, bacon and the great unknownby Andrew lang

Shakespeare, bacon and the great unknownby Andrew lang

The theory that Francis Bacon was, in the main, the author of “Shakespeare’s plays,” has now been for fifty years before the learned world. Its advocates have met with less support than they had reason to expect. Their methods, their logic, and their hypotheses closely resemble those applied by many British and foreign scholars to Homer; and by critics of the very Highest School to Holy Writ. Yet the Baconian theory is universally rejected in England by the professors and historians of English literature; and generally by students who have no profession save that of Letters. ………

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New collected rhymes by Andrew lang

New collected rhymes by Andrew lang

This poor little flutter of rhymes would not have been let down the wind: the project would have been abandoned but for the too flattering encouragement of a responsible friend. I trust that he may not “live to rue the day,” like Keith of Craigentolly in the
ballad………….

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The puzzle of dickens’s last plot By andrew lang

The puzzle of dickens’s last plot By andrew lang

Forster tells us that Dickens, in his later novels, from Bleak House onwards (1853), “assiduously cultivated” construction, “this essential of his art.” Some critics may think, that since so many of the best novels in the world “have no outline, or, if they have an outline, it is a demned outline,” elaborate construction is not absolutely “essential.” Really essential are character, “atmosphere,” humour…………

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Pickle the spy or the incognito of prince charles by Andrew lang

Pickle the spy or the incognito of prince charles by Andrew lang

This woful History began in my study of the Pelham Papers in the Additional Manuscripts of the British Museum. These include the letters of Pickle the Spy and of JAMES MOHR MACGREGOR. Transcripts of them were sent by me to Mr. ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON, for use in a novel, which he did not live to finish. The character of Pickle, indeed, like that of the Master of Ballantrae, is alluring to writers of historical romance. …………

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Oxford by Andrew lang

Oxford by Andrew lang

These papers do not profess even to sketch the outlines of a history of Oxford. They are merely records of the impressions made by this or that aspect of the life of the University as it has been in different ages. Oxford is not an easy place to design in black and white, with the pen or the etcher’s needle. On a wild winter or late beautiful poem) the sunshine fleets along the plain, revealing towers, and floods, and trees, in a gleam of watery light, and leaving them once more in shadow. ……

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Modern mythology by Andrew lang

Modern mythology by Andrew lang

It may well be doubted whether works of controversy serve any useful purpose. ‘On an opponent,’ as Mr. Matthew Arnold said, ‘one never does make any impression,’ though one may hope that controversy sometimes illuminates a topic in the eyes of impartial readers. The pages which follow cannot but seem wandering and desultory, for they are a reply to a book, Mr. Max Müller’s Contributions to the Science of Mythology, in which the attack is of a skirmishing character. ………

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R. F. Murray: his poems with memoir By andrew lang

R. F. Murray: his poems with memoir By andrew lang

Much is written about success and failure in the career of literature, about the reasons which enable one man to reach the front, and another to earn his livelihood, while a third, in
appearance as likely as either of them, fails and, perhaps, faints by the way. Mr. R. F. Murray, the author of The Scarlet Gown, was
among those who do not attain success, in spite of qualities which
seem destined to ensure it, and who fall out of the ranks. To him,
indeed, success and the rewards of this world, money, and praise,
did by no means seem things to be snatched at………..

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A monk of fife by Andrew lang

A monk of fife by Andrew lang

Norman Leslie of Pitcullo, whose narrative the reader has in his hands, refers more than once to his unfinished Latin Chronicle. That work, usually known as “The Book of Pluscarden,” has been edited by Mr. Felix Skene, in the series of “Historians of Scotland” (vol. vii.). To Mr. Skene’s introduction and notes the curious are referred. Here it may suffice to say that the original MS. of the Latin Chronicle is lost; that of six known manuscript copies none is older than 1480; that two of these copies contain a Prologue; and that the Prologue tells us all that has hitherto been known about the author………..

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LOST LEADERS BY ANDREW LANG

LOST LEADERS BY ANDREW LANG

September is the season of the second and lovelier youth of the river-scenery of Scotland. Spring comes but slowly up that way; it is June before the woods have quite clothed themselves. In April the angler or the sketcher is chilled by the east wind, whirling showers of hail, and even when the riverbanks are sweet with primroses, the bluff tops of the border hills are often bleak with late snow. This state of things is less unpropitious to angling than might be expected. A hardy race of trout will sometimes rise freely to the artificial fly when the natural fly is destroyed, and the angler is almost blinded with dusty snowflakes. All through midsummer the Scotch rivers lose their chief p. 2attractions. ……..

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Longinus On the sublime by Andrew Lang

Longinus On the sublime by Andrew Lang

The text which has been followed in the present Translation is that of Jahn (Bonn, 1867), revised by Vahlen, and republished in 1884. In several instances it has been found necessary to diverge from Vahlen’s readings, such divergencies being duly pointed out in the Notes…………..

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ESSAYS IN LITTLE by ANDREW LANG

ESSAYS IN LITTLE by ANDREW LANG

Of the following essays, five are new, and were written for this volume. They are the paper on Mr. R. L. Stevenson, the “Letter to a Young Journalist,” the study of Mr. Kipling, the note on Homer, and “The Last Fashionable Novel.” The article on the author of “Oh, no! we never mention Her,” appeared in the New York Sun, and was suggested by Mr. Dana, the editor of that journal……..

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Letters on literature by Andrew lang

Letters on literature by Andrew lang

These Letters were originally published in the Independent of New York. The idea of writing them occurred to the author after he had produced “Letters to Dead Authors.” That kind of Epistle was open to the objection that nobody would write so frankly to a correspondent about his own work, and yet it seemed that the form of Letters might be attempted again. The Lettres à Emilie sur la Mythologie are a well-known model, but Emilie was not an imaginary correspondent. ………….

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THE LIBRARY by ANDREW LANG

THE LIBRARY by ANDREW LANG

The pages in this volume on illuminated and other MSS. (with the exception of some anecdotes about Bussy Rabutin and Julie de Rambouillet) have been contributed by the Rev. W. J. Loftie, who has also written on early printed books (pp. 94-95). The pages on the Biblioklept (pp. 46-56) are reprinted, with the Editor’s kind
permission, from the Saturday Review; and a few remarks on the moral
lessons of bookstalls are taken from an essay in the same journal….

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RHYMES A LA MODE by ANDREW LANG

RHYMES A LA MODE by ANDREW LANG

The painted Briton built his mound,
And left his celts and clay,
On yon fair slope of sunlit ground
That fronts your garden gay;
The Roman came, he bore the sway,
He bullied, bought, and sold,
Your fountain sweeps his works away
Beside your manor old!………..

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Old friends By andrew lang

Old friends By andrew lang

The studies in this volume originally appeared in the “St. James’s Gazette.” Two, from a friendly hand, have been omitted here by the author of the rest, as non sua poma. One was by Mr. RICHARD SWIVELLER to a boon companion and brother in the lyric Apollo; the other, though purporting to have been addressed by Messrs. DOMBEY & SON to Mr. TOOTS, is believed, on internal evidence, to have been composed by the patron of the CHICKEN himself……………..

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How to fail in literature: a lecture by andrew lang

How to fail in literature: a lecture by andrew lang

HOW TO FAIL IN LITERATURE

What should be a man’s or a woman’s reason for taking literature as a vocation, what sort of success ought they to desire, what sort of ambition should possess them? These are natural questions, now that so many readers exist in the world, all asking for something new, now that so many writers are making their pens “in running to devour the way” over so many acres of foolscap. The legitimate reasons for enlisting (too often without receiving the shilling) in this army of writers are not far to seek. ……

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Helen of troy By andrew lang

Helen of troy By andrew lang

To all old Friends; to all who dwell
Where Avon dhu and Avon gel
Down to the western waters flow
Through valleys dear from long ago;
To all who hear the whisper’d spell
Of Ken; and Tweed like music swell
Hard by the Land Debatable,
Or gleaming Shannon seaward go, -
To all old Friends!………….

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Grass of parnassus By andrew lang

Grass of parnassus By andrew lang l

Many of the verses and translations in this volume were published first in Ballads and Lyrics of Old France (1872). Though very sensible that they have the demerits of imitative and even of undergraduate rhyme, I print them again because people I like have liked them. The rest are of different dates, and lack (though doubtless they need) the excuse of having been written, like some of the earlier pieces, during College Lectures. I would gladly have added to this volume what other more or less serious rhymes I have written, but circumstances over which I have no control have bound them up with Ballades, and other toys of that sort………….

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The disentanglers by andrew lang

The disentanglers by andrew lang

The scene was a dusky shabby little room in Ryder Street. To such caves many repair whose days are passed, and whose food is consumed, in the clubs of the adjacent thoroughfare of cooperative palaces, Pall Mall. The furniture was battered and dingy; the sofa on which Logan sprawled had a certain historic interest: it was covered with cloth of horsehair, now seldom found by the amateur. A bookcase with glass doors held a crowd of books to which the amateur would at once have flown. …………..

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The world’s desire by H. Rider haggard and Andrew lang

The world’s desire by H. Rider haggard and Andrew lang

The period in which the story of The World’s Desire is cast, was a period when, as Miss Braddon remarks of the age of the Plantagenets, “anything might happen.” Recent discoveries, mainly by Dr. Schliemann and Mr. Flinders Petrie, have shown that there really was much intercourse between Heroic Greece, the Greece of the Achaeans, and the Egypt of the Ramessids. This connection, rumoured of in Greek legends, is attested by Egyptian relics found in the graves of Mycenae, and by very ancient Levantine pottery, found in contemporary sites in Egypt. ……

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Letters to dead authors By andrew lang

Letters to dead authors By andrew lang

Sixteen of these Letters, which were written at the suggestion of the editor of the ‘St. James’s Gazette,’ appeared in that journal, from which they are now reprinted, by the editor’s kind permission. They have been somewhat emended, and a few additions have been made. The Letters to Horace, Byron, Isaak Walton, Chapelain, Ronsard, and Theocritus have not been published before…………..

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A collection of ballads By andrew lang

A collection of ballads By andrew lang

When the learned first gave serious attention to popular ballads, from the time of Percy to that of Scott, they laboured under certain disabilities. The Comparative Method was scarcely understood, and was little practised. Editors were content to study the ballads of their own countryside, or, at most, of Great Britain. Teutonic and Northern parallels to our ballads were then adduced, as by Scott and Jamieson. ……………

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Cock lane and common-sense To james payn, esq.

Cock lane and common-sense To james payn, esq.

Since the first publication of Cock Lane and Common-Sense in 1894, nothing has occurred to alter greatly the author’s opinions. He has tried to make the Folklore Society see that such things as modern reports of wraiths, ghosts, ‘fire-walking,’ ‘corpse-lights,’ ‘crystal-gazing,’ and so on, are within their province, and within the province of anthropology. In this attempt he has not quite succeeded. As he understands the situation, folklorists and anthropologists will hear gladly about wraiths, ghosts, corpse-candles, hauntings, crystal-gazing, and walking unharmed through fire, as long as these things are part of vague rural tradition, or of savage belief.

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Books and bookmen By andrew lang

Books and bookmen By andrew lang

The essays in this volume have, for the most part, already appeared in an American edition (Combes, New York, 1886). The Essays on ‘Old French Title-Pages’ and ‘Lady Book-Lovers’ take the place of ‘Book Binding’ and ‘Bookmen at Rome;’ ‘Elzevirs’ and ‘Some Japanese Bogie- Books’ are reprinted, with permission of Messrs. Cassell, from the Magazine of Art; ……

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Ballads in blue china and verses and translations By andrew lang

Ballads in blue china and verses and translations By andrew lang

Thirty years have passed, like a watch in the night, since the earlier of the two sets of verses here reprinted, Ballades in Blue China, was published. At first there were but twenty-two Ballades; ten more were added later. They appeared in a little white vellum wrapper, with a little blue Chinese singer copied from a porcelain
jar; and the frontispiece was a little design by an etcher now
famous……………

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Ballads and lyrics of old france: with other poems By andrew lang

Ballads and lyrics of old france: with other poems By andrew lang

I. CHARLES D’ORLEANS, who has sometimes, for no very obvious reason, been styled the father of French lyric poetry, was born in May, 1391. He was the son of Louis D’Orleans, the grandson of Charles V., and the father of Louis XII. Captured at Agincourt, he was kept in England as a prisoner from 1415 to 1440, when he returned to France, where he died in 1465. His verses, for the most part roundels on two rhymes, are songs of love and spring, and retain the allegorical forms of the Roman de la Rose……

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Aucassin and nicolete By andrew lang

Aucassin and nicolete By andrew lang

By a rare piece of good fortune the one manuscript of the Song-Story has escaped those waves of time, which have wrecked the bark of Menander, and left of Sappho but a few floating fragments. The very form of the tale is peculiar; we have nothing else from the twelfth or thirteenth century in the alternate prose and verse of the cante-fable. {1} We have fabliaux in verse, and prose Arthurian romances. We have Chansons de Geste, heroic poems like “Roland,” unrhymed assonant laisses, but we have not the alternations of prose with laisses in seven-syllabled lines. ……….

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Angling sketches By andrew lang

Angling sketches By andrew lang

Several of the sketches in this volume have appeared in periodicals. “The Bloody Doctor” was in Macmillan’s Magazine, “The Confessions of a Duffer,” “Loch Awe,” and “The Lady or the Salmon?” were in the Fishing Gazette, but have been to some extent re-written. “The Double Alibi” was in Longman’s Magazine. The author has to thank the Editors and Publishers for permission to reprint these papers…………..

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Andrew lang’s introduction to the compleat angler

Andrew lang’s introduction to the compleat angler

To write on Walton is, indeed, to hold a candle to the sun. The editor has been content to give a summary of the chief or rather the only known, events in Walton’s long life, adding a notice of his character as displayed in his Biographies and in The Compleat Angler, with comments on the ancient and modern practice of fishing, illustrated by passages from Walton’s foregoers and contemporaries. Like all editors of Walton, he owes much to his predecessors, Sir John Hawkins, Oldys, Major, and, above all, to the learned Sir Harris Nicolas.

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Alfred tennyson By andrew lang

Alfred tennyson By andrew lang

In writing this brief sketch of the Life of Tennyson, and thi attempt to appreciate his work, I have rested almost entirely on the Biography by Lord Tennyson (with his kind permission) and on the text of the Poems. As to the Life, doubtless current anecdotes, not given in the Biography, are known to me, and to most people. But as they must also be familiar to the author of the Biography, I have not thought it desirable to include what he rejected. The works of the
“localisers” I have not read:…………

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Adventures among books by andrew lang

Adventures among books by andrew lang

Of the Essays in this volume “Adventures among Books,” and “Rab’s Friend,” appeared in Scribner’s Magazine; and “Recollections of Robert Louis Stevenson” (to the best of the author’s memory) in The North American Review. The Essay on “Smollett” was in the Anglo-Saxon, which has ceased to appear; and the shorter papers, such as “The Confessions of Saint Augustine,” in a periodical styled Wit and Wisdom……..

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In the wrong paradise and other stories by andrew lang

In the wrong paradise and other stories by andrew lang

I have asked you to let me put your name here, that I might have the opportunity of saying how much pleasure I owe to your romances. They make one a boy again while one is reading them; and the student of “The Witch’s Head” and of “King Solomon’s Mines” is as young, in heart, as when he hunted long ago with Chingachgook and Uncas. You, who know the noble barbarian in his African retreats, appear to retain more than most men of his fresh natural imagination. ………….

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John knox and the reformation By andrew lang

John knox and the reformation By andrew lang

In this brief Life of Knox I have tried, as much as I may, to get behind Tradition, which has so deeply affected even modern histories of the Scottish Reformation, and even recent Biographies of the Reformer. The tradition is based, to a great extent, on Knox’s own “History,” which I am therefore obliged to criticise as carefully as I can. In his valuable John Knox, a Biography, Professor Hume Brown says that in the “History” “we have convincing proof alike of the writer’s good faith, and of his perception of the conditions of historic truth.” ………..

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The homeric hymns a new prose translation and essays, literary and mythological, by andrew lang

The homeric hymns by andrew lang

To translate the Hymns usually called “Homeric” had long been my wish, and, at the Publisher’s suggestion, I undertook the work. Though not in partnership, on this occasion, with my friend, Mr. Henry Butcher (Professor of Greek in the University of Edinburgh), I have been fortunate in receiving his kind assistance in correcting the proofs of the longer and most of the minor Hymns. Mr. Burnet, Professor of Greek in the University of St. Andrews, has also most generously read the proofs of the translation…………

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Historical mysteries By Andrew lang

Historical mysteries By Andrew lang

These Essays, which appeared, with two exceptions, in The Cornhill Magazine, 1904, have been revised, and some alterations, corrections, and additions have been made in them. ‘Queen Oglethorpe,’ in which Miss Alice Shield collaborated, doing most of the research, is reprinted by the courteous permission of the editor, from Blackwood’s Magazine. A note on ‘The End of Jeanne de la Motte,’ has been added as a sequel to ‘The Cardinal’s Necklace:’ it appeared in The Morning Post, the Editor kindly granting leave to republish…………….

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The book of dreams and ghosts

The book of dreams and ghosts

Since the first edition of this book appeared (1897) a considerable number of new and startling ghost stories, British, Foreign and Colonial, not yet published, have reached me. Second Sight abounds. Crystal Gazing has also advanced in popularity. For a singular series of such visions, in which distant persons and places, unknown to the gazer, were correctly described by her, I may refer to my book, The Making of Religion (1898). A memorial stone has been erected on the scene of the story called “The Foul Fords” (p. 269), so that tale is likely to endure in tradition………………

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Custom and myth By andrew lang

Custom and myth By andrew lang

Though some of the essays in this volume have appeared in various serials, the majority of them were written expressly for their present purpose, and they are now arranged in a designed order. During some years of study of Greek, Indian, and savage mythologies, I have become more and more impressed with a sense of the inadequacy of the prevalent method of comparative mythology. That method is based on the belief that myths are the result of a disease of language, as the pearl is the result of a disease of the oyster. …………..

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The blue fairy book by andrew lang

THE BLUE FAIRY BOOK

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The arabian nights entertainments, selected and edited by andrew lang

The arabian nights entertainments

The stories in the Fairy Books have generally been such as old
women in country places tell to their grandchildren. Nobody knows
how old they are, or who told them first. The children of Ham,
Shem and Japhet may have listened to them in the Ark, on wet days.
Hector’s little boy may have heard them in Troy Town, for it is
certain that Homer knew them, and that some of them were written
down in Egypt about the time of Moses……………

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